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MPP Bill Walker says he is deeply concerned about the skyrocketing number of people who are appealing to the local United Way for help after having their electricity or heating services cut off by utility companies or because they are at risk of a disconnection.

The Bruce-Grey-Owen Sound Progressive Conservative politician said increasing hydro rates, which he blames on Ontario Liberal government mismanagement, and a lack of jobs in the province are behind the troublesome trend.

“Sadly, I think we’re going to have more and more disconnections,” he said Thursday in an interview. “It’s unacceptable.”

Francesca Dobbyn, executive director of the United Way of Bruce Grey, told The Sun Times Wednesday that the agency has received more calls this fall — the bulk of which have come in within the last few weeks — about service disconnections than in any other year of its eight-year-old utility assistance program.

At least two calls from people who have been recently cut off from hydro or natural gas have been answered each day since early September, she said.

The United Way has also provided about $250,000 in utility assistance from January to the end of September — a record for the first nine months of a year — and has run out of money. There are waiting lists for each component of its utility assistance program.

Walker said the price of electricity in Ontario has tripled since the Liberal government came to power in 2003, creating a financial hardship for many more people.

Hydro rates are set to increase again Saturday — by 0.2 cents per kilowatt hour for off-peak periods and 0.5 cents per kwh for on-peak periods. The average bill will jump by at least $2 per month.

Skyrocketing electricity costs, he said, can be linked to the Liberal’s Green Energy Act — which has led to large government subsidies for wind turbine projects — as well as scandals like the $1 billion cost to cancel gas plant projects in Mississauga and Oakville.

He said he will continue to push Ontario’s government to get “this energy system under control.”

The Liberals created the mess, he said, and they must address it.

Higher energy costs mean less money in peoples’ pockets, he said, which can cause tenants and homeowners to struggle with other bills like natural gas.

“People shouldn’t have to choose between paying their hydro or paying their mortgage,” he said.

Walker also vowed Thursday, after reading The Sun Times articles on the increased demand for utility assistance at the United Way, to write a letter to Energy Minister Bob Chiarelli to ask that the money energy companies like Hydro One and Union Gas must provide to utility assistance programs in Ontario be indexed to increases in utility prices.

Utility companies are mandated by the Ontario Energy Board to set aside a certain amount of revenue each year to fund programs that provide emergency assistance to low-income residents that are at risk of a service disconnection or have been disconnected from a utility.

Dobbyn welcomed Walker’s indexing idea, but added if utility rates go down the funding should not.

She said linking assistance payments — like from Ontario Works and the Ontario Disability Support Program — to inflation would also “be a significant step in the right direction.”